


sticky-sweet ghosts, of (not-quite) regret

by hallowgirl



Category: Political RPF - UK 20th-21st c.
Genre: (also could be seen as), (could be seen as), (kind of), Affairs, Angst and Feels, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Bittersweet Ending, Camerband, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Guilt, Infidelity, Loveless Marriage, M/M, Marital Problems, Marriage of Convenience, Memories, Post-GE2015, Regret, Rival Romance, from enemies to friends to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 21:56:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6347140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hallowgirl/pseuds/hallowgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She finds that it seems to be when Samantha isn't there, she often feels as though she's waiting, and it's only when Samantha arrives, perfume tickling her neck, smile smaller and sweeter than anyone would guess, that Justine feels like she's not waiting anymore.<br/>She'll drink it in and she'll taste the ghost of the lemonade in her mouth, sticky-sweet and longing and something that's almost but not quite regret."</p>
<p>As their husbands disappear into each other, Justine and Samantha find it's easier to let themselves appear to each other in their own space, with the sunshine warm on their heads and memories bittersweet in their mouths. Inspired partly by "Lemonade" by Nicole Dollanganger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sticky-sweet ghosts, of (not-quite) regret

**Author's Note:**

> So, this came about through a combination of someone mentioning there was virtually no Justine/Samantha fic in the world, watching old videos of the wives-particularly Justine-on the campaign trail, and observing the dynamics of the Milibands. I wrote it in an insomniac burst of listening to "Lemonade" by Nicole Dollanganger over and over, which partly inspired this.  
> Obviously, not intended to be taken as real events. Leave a comment if you like it!

_So I make lemonade_

_Put on a dress and I go lay_

_Out in the day room_

_And I wait for you_

_To come on over and give it to me_

_Give you a lap dance outside in a lawn chair_

_Drinking lemonade and playing with my hair_

_ Lemonade- _ _Nicole Dollanganger_

*

They're on the sofa, not quite sitting, not quite lying. Her hair brushes Samantha's shoulder, whispering across her skin, like the knowledge that they never touch between them.

Justine's seen it between them before the election, before she could see that she saw it, before they saw it themselves, she knows. But she knows her husband's face inside out-beautifully, horribly well-and his eyes light up for those back-and-forth lines and smiles that struggle not to betray themselves into grins.

She doesn't know when she first invited Samantha over, perhaps seeking all the whispers of that same knowledge between them. Because they know, and Samantha knows, in the way that Justine had probably prayed for to a god she'd never really believed in. Samantha knows and she comes over and Justine and her drape themselves in a garden that feels like it's dying, even when the sunlight is too warm on their skin, their heads aching with the swollen secrets they can't let dribble out, trickling truth between them.

Ed had been someone who could have been designed for her and should have felt designed for her and so that should have been enough, she'd always told herself.

Samantha shifts, her hair brushing Justine's face, and slowly Justine pushes it back behind her ear. The touch lingers, whispering of the cold lemonade they're drinking in the glasses ringed between them like letters spelling silent words, the meetings that their husbands have crammed into their ears today, as though Justine and Samantha can't reach through all the explaining to grasp all this time their husbands suddenly need so much together.

Justine swallows down the lemonade, the sweetness flooding her mouth, the tang curling her tongue. Samantha's lipstick stains the glass, too bright for Justine, and she wonders if she'll bother to clean it off.

Samantha's hand traces her cheekbones and the lemonade is a ghost stroking her mouth and the sunlight from the outside world just barely brushes their skin.

*

 

Sometimes, the children play together and she can imagine she and Samantha had never married the men they married, that they are mothers, like a hundred other mothers, whose children run through the playground, outside in the streets, free of their fathers' names that will cling tight to them one day. More often, too often, the children stay with nannies, Samantha's less often than her own, and it's only now does she realise that she's too used to leaving the boys and that they're too used to being left.

She tries, a few times, to hug them, and they _let_ her, is the only way she can put it. They let her and it's then she realises that it will be too late and it's already too late.

It's Samantha from her private school and her background with _gentry_ sewn into her DNA who seems to know how to hug her children and exclaim in the right way over their little cards and hugs and tears and smiles-so little, all of them-and Justine sometimes wonders at just how she _knows_ because she always tries but she can never quite _feel_ it the way Samantha seems to, and that makes her feel worse, even through all her work and the decisions she pushes through and the way Samantha just touches her arm without saying anything.

It's another unexpected thing she finds with Samantha, under the cool sweetness of the lemonade and the stretching out of the afternoons with the sun warm through the glass and the way the two of them lie together, with their husbands' politics and Nottingham and art school all pulled away, leaving the two of them, alone under the long warmth of the afternoon.

There was the election and Justine let people take the childrens' pictures and took them leafleting and pushed them on swings for cameras, and she can't remember when she was just _with_ them. Even on holiday, when the ghost of him hung over Ed and the ghost of the election hung over them all.

 

*

 

Sometimes, she and Samantha cry. The tears will run out suddenly, creasing her face, and Samantha will knuckle at her eyes, smearing her mascara black down her cheeks, and they don't need to ask each other why. Their hair sticks damp to their cheeks, and she winds Samantha's around her fingers and their tears taste salty-hot under the warm sweetness of lemonade left too long in the sun. Their lipstick stains their skin, smearing each other's messily, like the scrambled whispers of their sentences.

Sometimes, they laugh, too horribly bright, and it's awful because they shouldn't be this happy when they can feel their husbands crumbling away from them and into each other. When the sun is too warm, Justine leans back in a chair and wonders when she was last outside in the sunshine, away from work and long law briefs and a silence she and her husband pretend isn't silence. Samantha pretends to dance in front of her for a moment, her eyes so bright with being away from the cameras and protection and all the eyes always on her, away from all their eyes and only in front of Justine's. Samantha laughs then, just laughs like a child, a giggle pushing its' way out of Justine's mouth with Samantha's hair slapping into her face, the giggles pealing out of their mouths like they're just two little girls, with all the mistakes they can make in front of them.

She finds that it seems to be when Samantha isn't there, she often feels as though she's waiting, and it's only when Samantha arrives, perfume tickling her neck, smile smaller and sweeter than anyone would guess, that Justine feels like she's not waiting anymore.

*

 

When Ed comes home, he's always dreamy, more than he ever was when Justine started seeing him, and she watches him, carried in that cloud of aftershave that's not his own, and his mouth swollen with arguing and insults softened with fondness that swelled into kissing, kissing and mouths tasting skin. She knows without knowing exactly when or how or why but with knowing who and she's not going to reach out and touch what she knows he is to Ed, what the two of them are to each other.

They lie in bed at night, the gap between them slicing so precisely, pushing them onto their sides, faces turned sharply away, sinking down into the mattress like the cleanest, sweetest blade.

 

*

 

She's selected to take silk and he smiles too wide and tells her how proud he is. She smiles too small and accepts it.

They have a nice dinner, at opposite ends of the table, with the words straining to reach each other, both of them smiling at each other and both of them thinking about other people.

He goes out to a phonebank, the first real smile denting his cheeks, as he sinks into the work he'll be grateful to lose himself in (until he calls her husband, always these days until he calls her husband) and she sinks down in front of the TV and wonders vaguely if the children know and if they even minded that they were put to bed early. And wonders vaguely that now she's alone for the first time this evening, and for the first time her smile doesn't ache.

At the ceremony, he tells her how proud he is and kisses her cheek and ruffles the boys' hair and they let her pat their heads and then when she reaches for their hands, they slide out of her grasp before she can close her fingers around them, always just a little out of her reach. They pose for a picture and they both smile too wide. She watches him talk to Boris, and how when Cameron's name slides out of his mouth, Ed's hands curl a little, colour tickles his cheeks, his eyes brighten and his mouth soften with something so fond Justine wonders how on earth Boris can't see.

Ed, of course, has to go to the Commons and she watches on TV, watches the moment he stands up, and the smile that broadens and widens his mouth as laughter shakes his chest as he looks at Cameron. She watches Cameron's cheeks dimple with the grin that creases his own eyes and she watches that laughter catch between him and Ed, that moment of locked eyes that she's seen so many times before but seems brighter now, stronger, in the middle of the Commons, the two of them, whether on the same side or fighting against each other, caught together in that smile.

She strokes the softness of the robes she's worn so proudly today and it aches in her chest a little, but not nearly as much as it should.

Samantha calls her and tells her how proud she is and Justine feels that pride spreading through her chest, like lightning slowly filtering through her body, that pride shared with Samantha's praise and hearing Samantha's voice in the ear, after a day filled with praise from her colleagues and her husband's arm around her shoulders and her childrens' smiles that aren't quite for her, for the first time, she feels that pride settle into place, brighten her own eyes, and Samantha's voice feels closer than her husband's hands, closer than her childrens' grip sliding out of reach.

_I couldn't do something like that_ Samantha tells her honestly and Justine tells her _You could do more,_ because she might be someone who wears her professionalism and intellect and success like a badge, like a second skin, a message she beams out to the world, but Samantha seems to have one success hidden under another, a little shyer than Justine's, but perhaps, when she peels back the layers and uncovers them, even brighter.

She can feel Samantha's smile through the phone and it feels brighter in her chest than her husband's voice or the beams of her colleagues or the laughter of her children, which  these days is never for her.

*

 

Samantha's hair tangles with her own and the experiences they've shared become the stories that tangle around them both, their own mouths swollen with the sweet taste of Samantha's perfume and the way Justine's mouth shapes itself around her name.

When they lie together, it's in Justine's bed. It's her and Ed's sheets that wrap around them both, that press their shoulders together. Samantha is so slim, curved so well in such the right places that Justine could almost not believe it, and Samantha never believes it, protests that she's got so much more to do, and Justine loves the feeling of her hands tangled in Samantha's thick dark hair, the way Samantha looks without make-up, and Justine kisses under her eyes then.

Samantha tells her that she's beautiful and Justine believes that she is, to Samantha. The lemonade is sweetness exploding in their mouths and Samantha whispers under her ear, their legs warm together, her mouth hot and wet and sweet on Justine's neck, their hands pressing into each other like they could crawl inside each other's warm skin.

Samantha's lipstick stains the pillowcases, too dark to be her own, and Ed must see but he doesn't say anything and that aftershave clings to his skin again, and they lie there, colours and scents smeared on their skin, silent blemishes of their secrets to each other.

*

 

She and Samantha lie by the window, the sun warm on their skin, and Samantha's head on her shoulder. She presses kisses into Samantha's hair and drinks in her warm scent and their skin lies there against each other, too near and warm to tell whose is whose. The absence of their husbands and the absence of their husbands together is more of a presence than they are these days, and it's underneath all of it but Justine and Samantha are together under the sun, with their kisses lazy and without thrown-out arguments to cover them like blankets, and their perfume their own scent that breathes in both their skin. Their lipstick stains each other and the lemonade is the coolness of something like freedom and something like escape and something they can't quite find words for and don't need to, that's all their own.

She and Ed don't speak much these days, apart from an exchange over a rare dinner about the kids and his eyes are always far away, roaming for the next time he'll be with Cameron, their arguments pulling tight and saying all the things they can't. They pretend that the kids' smiles are bigger than they are and pretend that they don't wonder if it's already too late for the boys, and pretend that the boys haven't already stopped wondering about them.

They both remember to say they're married in public and to wait for the day that they'll finally be forced to admit to everyone else that they're not, and for the day that they'll be forced to admit it to each other and she isn't sure which one will be worse.

They wear their wedding rings when Ed has to give speeches and Justine has to give talks and the rest of the time they let themselves forget, just sometimes at first, and then more and more often.

They drift around and away from each other, at a distance that stretches out between them, and Justine will occasionally take him in with her eyes and then her gaze will flicker to a half-empty glass, with the ghost of Samantha's lipstick pressed around the rim, and the whispers of their warmth lingering in between.

She'll drink it in and she'll taste the ghost of the lemonade in her mouth, sticky-sweet and longing and something that's almost but not quite regret.

*

_The next time he_

_Kisses me, I want him to taste_

_Red ruby lips_

_And the love we made_

_And the lemonade.- Nicole Dollanganger_

**Author's Note:**

> A video of part of the Commons statement that Justine watches where Ed speaks to David can be found here, with Ed and David's exchange from 2:59 to 4:55 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGHiBjiFkas  
> The song, "Lemonade" by Nicole Dollanganger, which partly inspired this fic, can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2VhWttUV6I
> 
> I've never actually written Justine's POV before, as I recall, so that was an interesting change. Leave a comment if you like it!


End file.
